The sun rises over the RV park and the tiny house row and the levee road. I turn my car onto the loop as the news of a strike in Hong Kong and a tariff against China rumbles from the radio. Out on Highway 12, the long mournful bleat of a semi startles the vehicle turning in front of me. I see the driver shudder. It’s a close call.
And the beat goes on.
I sail clear to the bridge and over it, above the river winding its slow eternal path to the sea. The man with the three-legged dog picks his careful way down Front Street. I slow and angle around him. He raises his hand without glancing away from the pattern of his feet on the cracked cement.
And the beat goes on.
I sit at a computer for eight hours, maneuvering words on the virtual page. Click after click sends my thoughts out into the vastness which I don’t understand. A server on the far side of the planet holds the messages for an instant, then flings them towards the cold embrace of the invisible net.
And the beat goes on.
Five o’clock comes too fast. My car seems to drive itself, back over the same bridge, along two rivers, in plain sight of a single egret standing motionless in a wide swathe of hyacinth. I pause to watch a small skiff make its way down the San Joaquin, then slip downward, back into the park.
And the beat goes on.
Ten neighbors gather around a table. Dishes get passed. Wine gets poured. Lemonade, too. Salads, cornbread, tender roast chicken from the grocery deli counter. Smiles flash. A little puppy settles onto the floor beneath his owners. I close my eyes.
And the beat goes on.
Later I sit in my worn rocker, with its smooth wood aged by the caprice of time and the vagaries of the Delta winds. But it still bears my weight, still moves me gently, to and fro. In the twilight’s stillness, a flutter signals the arrival of my evening visitor. I hold myself as still as possible while she sips sweet nectar overhead. Then I raise my phone with its back-facing camera, and the hummingbird and I pose for a selfie.
It’s the thirteenth day of the sixty-eighth month of My Year Without Complaining. Life continues.
Happy birthday to my brother Kevin Richard Corley.